Michael Dukakis

844-500-4242.

508, worse than Dukakis and Duvall? Wow.

Yeah.

No question.

We'd jump off the bus, run up to where the rally was, talk to people.

know it wasn't tarmac to tarmac which had been the traditional way of going from airport to airport for obvious reasons to cover more territory with Nixon and all the others but this was just being out among the people and it was different from the Dukakis race that I'd covered so it was just gloriously hands-on and um And at every crossroads, Bill Clinton would give a speech to one point in Iowa one night.

It was like 2 in the morning.

We all had to be up for the morning shows.

Um, but, um, but yeah, And yet he was put on the ticket – usually, why are VPs put on tickets, right? They're put on tickets to kind of balance the ticket, right? Like we have a New England governor, so let's put a southern senator.

I'm thinking Dukakis and Benson, right? You sort of try to balance out tickets.

In his case, he was put on because – he could really distill MAGA, right? Don Jr.

wanted him on the ticket.

Yeah.

Them and Michael Dukakis' failed presidential run.

The two things we remember from 1988.

And Paige's birthday.

But this was just being out among the people.

And it was different from the Dukakis race that I'd covered.

So it was just gloriously hands-on.

And at every Crossroads, Bill Clinton would give a speech to one point in Iowa one night.

Trump even, when he was in Gastonia Wednesday, explicitly said, hey, remember the Willie Horton ad? Which anyone who has ever studied political science or who was alive in the 80s will remember was this just infamous ad that was pretty widely criticized as racist.

that focused on a black man who killed a white woman and blamed Michael Dukakis, who was the Democratic Party nominee in 1988, for him being released from prison.

And so Trump brought that up and he said, that ad worked.

It was, you know, Dukakis obviously lost.

I remember a story in 1988.

I had run the race that defeated Dukakis when he ran for governor of Massachusetts by Ed King.

And because of that, I was sort of the expert on how to beat Dukakis after he got the Democratic nomination for president against George Bush.

And Lee Atwater, as you recall, was the head of the Republican Party, a close buddy of mine, and was running the Bush campaign.

So at that point...

Atwater was criticizing Dukakis by saying, you're too liberal, you're a big taxier, you're a big spender, you're soft on defense.

Dukakis replied by being confirmed in a tank.

With the helmet? Yeah.